


the world is yours and you can't refuse it

by ArmedWithAStaringFly



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Super Sons (Comics), Superman (Comics)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Just kids being kids, but you can read it as pre-romantic, they're smol so they're just friends at this point, tsundere damian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 08:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10185083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmedWithAStaringFly/pseuds/ArmedWithAStaringFly
Summary: Damian Wayne is not a kid.He lets Grayson call him “kiddo,” sure. And much to his dismay, there have been times when he, Pennyworth, or Father carried him to his bedroom after he dozed off somewhere else in the Wayne Manor. And he lost his last bab–DECIDUOUS tooth more recently than he liked. But that doesn’t make him a kid....Jon Kent, the half-alien, on the other hand? Is perhaps the biggest kid he’s ever known.





	

Damian Wayne is not a kid.

He lets Grayson call him “kiddo,” sure. And much to his dismay, there have been times when he, Pennyworth, or Father carried him to his bedroom after he dozed off somewhere else in the Wayne Manor. And he lost his last ba– _deciduous_ tooth more recently than he liked. But that doesn’t make him a kid.

Damian’s earliest memories are being pushed to climb mountains, taught how to fling swords into an opponent’s gut, and told, time and time again, of the legacy he will fulfill. Visceral violence and blood. There was never a time for childhood. At least not one in the traditional sense that everyone else seems to describe.

Besides, he’s thirteen. Surely that adolescent age is finally old enough to be considered on his way to adulthood, his lack of growth spurt and still-high-pitched voice be damned.

Jon Kent, the half-alien, on the other hand? Is perhaps the biggest kid he’s ever known.

He didn’t want to be friends with him. He _didn’t_. With his unrefined, feline-endangering powers and his processed snack bars and his completely absurd notion that his temporary (that growth spurt is coming!) taller stature gives him anything resembling superiority. He was annoying and he was overenthusiastic and he was _ten_. That’s like, a _whole three years younger_ than Damian.

It was Kent, really, who started calling him at random. And Damian reasoned that it was more fun talking to him than breaking bones alone. It was just a force of habit, really, that lead him to feeling a little lonely when Kent didn’t call for a while.

It was quaint how deeply he wanted that video game. He should have understood by the age of ten that flashy, colorful distractions are detrimental to practical abilities. But as he scrolled through the company website and saw Youtube videos of the gameplay demos, he supposed he could see some tactical training nestled within the silly sounds and bastardization of real-world physics. And he guessed that he could see why someone as childish as Kent would want to play. So he told Father that he wanted it, but made sure to insist that he buy it himself–he didn’t need his father sneaking any hints to the alien. He still considered it rather silly, though.

But that didn’t stop the pride he felt when Kent’s eyes lit up at the sight of the gift that he’d pulled out from right under his father’s nose, as much as he tried to force it down. Or the heat in his cheeks when Kent launched at him into a hug.

Or the slight thrill he did get at maneuvering those candy-colored monkeys across the screen. 

“Ha! Got you!”

“No fair! That’s cheating!”

“It’s not cheating if it’s built into the game!”

“HA! Got _you_!”

“What? Argh…”

Ok, it was more than a thrill. It was different. It was…fun. And for a moment, surrounded by warm Christmas colors and their last score flashing on the screen, Damian didn’t feel like Robin or the Son of Bruce Wayne or anything. He wasn’t sure what he felt like, but a part of him liked it. Another part of him liked the way Kent was smiling and laughing (because of him!). In a quiet moment, he decided that maybe he could try this friendship thing out after all.

In what seemed like no time at all, Jon dozed off on his shoulder and his father was tapping him on his other to tell them that they had to go. Damian may have pouted—though he preferred the term sulked—just a bit as he pulled his coat on. Just a little.

Yes, after that day Damian started calling him. Mostly just to check on his progress as Superboy; it really should be going along faster. He had powers, after all, he could be dangerous to those around him. Of course, on occasion, he’d call on long nights when father was gone and Pennyworth was cleaning their large, ghostly quiet mansion. There was something about Jon’s rambling, even when it wasn’t about superheroing as much as trivial topics like farms and cleaning his room and homework, that made the hours past faster and his own bedroom seem a little less empty. That’s when he got to thinking, really, he never went to a normal school. He never rode a garishly yellow bus to sit at an uncomfortable desk to drone out simple equations or read short books. He never swung around low plastic bars on a playground.

He was certainly beyond such things. But he was curious all the same.

He didn’t experience them from a kid’s point of view, of course. But he did get to spy on Jon from inside a rubber mask while  _he_ did. Before he spied on his cute little family game nights straight out of a sappy sitcom and his wholly undignified 9:00 bedtime.

Damian wasn’t a kid. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a little fascinated by what it was like to be one. At least, until it was time to whip Superboy into shape.

One night, when they were laying out under the stars covered in mud and and twigs violently snagged throughout their costumes, Superboy spoke up like something had long been bugging him.

“You said my name is Superboy instead of Jon.”

“It is. As is Robin for me. If we are to reach our true potential, we must commit to those aliases.”

Jon was quiet for a moment. Damian hoped that it meant that he got it. Until he spoke.

“Dad said that staying connected to your civilian identity is really important. I asked him once. He’s Clark Kent first, he said. It keeps him grounded and reminds him what’s really important.”

This time Damian was quiet. “Maybe it is different for you aliens. But my father puts on the mask when he goes out as Bruce Wayne. Anyone who really _knows_ him can tell you that. Anyway, your father should be pushing you harder instead of coddling you.” He didn’t have to look to see Superboy’s face scrunch up in annoyance.

“He doesn’t coddle me!” he argued, crossing his skinny (but destructively strong all the same) arms, “and you act like I don’t have enough training to be in the field!”

“You don’t.” Damian grinned cooly at him, watching his face redden even in the darkness. “Shameful, really. That’s why I brought you out here. You don’t have time to be a schoolboy.” Damian ignored, for the time being, that he was out here too because his own father wanted him to be a schoolboy rather than work–perhaps that alien had gotten to him, god forbid.

Jon only humphed and turned away. Until,

“Your dad worries that you, like, never take off the Robin suit.”

“How the hell do you know?”

“I heard him say it to my dad at Christmas. Maybe my super hearing might have come in a little, I guess, I dunno.”

Damian gritted his teeth in annoyance. “He’s the one to talk.”

Another moment of quiet. “Doesn’t it all get to you too?”

Damian tutted. “Why would it?”

“Isn’t that why you call me all the time? And why you just broke into my bedroom?” Jon chuckled, and it made Damian’s fist clench.

“I’m trying to make you fulfill your legacies as Superb–”

“Dad says I’m doing just fine! Why else would you follow me around!?” Damian’s blood boiled. How dare he insinuate that Damian is following him like a puppy begging for attention? That’s the last time Damian tries to _guide_ a snot-nosed little brat like _him_.

“ _Shuddup_ ,” he snapped. Jon’s smile fell before Damian firmly rolled to the side, facing away from him.

Crickets chirped for several moments more.

“Hey Damian?”

“ _What?_ ” he sighed.

“When we’re all done with this, like when we get back home, do you wanna stay over? I haven’t had someone to play Monk E Monsters with in a while. Kathy doesn’t like it.”

“What, like a sleepover?” Damian said mockingly. He’d never really had one, but he’d become familiar through pop-cultural osmosis. The word brought imagery of silly sleeping bags on floors, confectionery being consumed at a disgusting rate, and pointless games being played into the night.  

“Yeah!” Nothing about Jon’s tone was ironic. It was cheerful, and hopeful. It caught him a little off guard.

“Sure, whatever.” With a moment’s thought, Damian added, “If Father allows it. I do have a very tight schedule as Robin, you know.” Just to appease the kid, he told himself. After all, Jon did smile brightly at his answer.

In the end, however, after they returned to Hamilton county to a mother’s panic, harsh scoldings, promises that Jon would not go out for months, and turns in the shower to wash off days of grime and sweat, much to Damian’s surprise Father did consider it best that he rest a bit at the Kent’s for the weekend. So he found himself sprawled out on the Kent’s couch, biting his lip as his ape punched Jon’s off a platform, mindlessly tossing microwaved popcorn kernels into his mouth. Later on, Lane let Jon watch one sort of scary movie, apparently convinced because he had an older friend with him.

“Psh, she thinks I’m such a baby,” Jon scoffed. “I’ll be fine.”

Thirty minutes in, Jon was gripping Damian’s arm for seemingly dear life. That familiar heat rose to his cheeks once again.

“You’re such a _kid_ ,” Damian groaned, but didn’t pull his arm away. Especially not when maybe one of those stupid jump scares might have made him flinch a little. But he’d be damned if he let Jon see that.

Damian found sleeping in a thin sleeping bag on an inflatable mattress about as comfortable as he expected.

“Thanks for staying over, Damian! It was super fun!” Jon piped from the bed above him.

But it wasn’t so bad, he supposed. And their parents must not have been too mad about all this, because they still let them team up to fight crime–for the times they knew about, at least.

“Hey, you said you’ve never been to a carnival, right?” Jon asked over the phone one night, several months later.

“Um…no,” Damian replied, uneasy at the sudden question. He wasn’t going to ask what he thought he was going to…

“Do you wanna come to the one in town this weekend?”

“Seriously?”

“Uh huh, my other friends are gonna be busy with their parents’ stands and it’ll be fun! You should come! Have you even ever ridden a ferris wheel?”

“I’ve never _wanted_ to ride a ferris wheel,” Damian said in a huff.

“You always say stuff like that, and then you always have fun.”

Damian denied it, but that didn’t stop him from showing up at the Kent’s door anyway.

Of course, Grayson had heard him discussing the matter over the phone and wasted no time in pressing him into it.

“I grew up in something like a carnival,” he’d said, “you’ll like it. It’s fun! You can run around and eat sugary crap like kids your age should.”

Damian tutted in irritation. But his brother had persisted. Later, when he didn’t know the youngest Robin was lurking in the shadows, Damian had overheard Richard telling Pennyworth that he thinks Jon is a good influence on him–a balancing force, so to speak. Damian tried to ignore that point on the ride to Hamilton County.

Though he had to admit, there was something a little comforting about peeling off the sweaty Robin costume after having had worn it for several days straight. Sometimes he just forgets to.

If he’d known that he’d have to squeeze into the backseat of the Kent’s stale-smelling family truck, he’d have hired a car to take him directly there…but Jon soon distracted him with rapid-fire stories about pie-eating contests, water-gun fights, and viciously spinning light up rides. Damian was hard pressed to admit it, even to himself, but part of it was intriguing. Provincial, but intriguing.

“Last time Alan ate an entire cheesedog before going on the tilt-a-wheel, we told him not to but he did anyway and then when he went on, it _all_ –”

“I think that’s enough, dear,” Ms. Lane said from the front seat.

“Quite enough,” Damian agreed, though something in him wanted to hear the end.

“I’ll tell ya later,” Jon said, almost like he read his mind. It made him less uncomfortable than it should. In any case, he had inspected the alien man’s powers closely enough to know that telepathy was not one of them, and so his son certainly didn’t have it.

Something in his head that sounded an awful lot like Grayson’s voice told him that such things occur with friends.

Perhaps that was why he also let Jon grab his arm again and drag him to the muddy fairground, with Lane’s voice shrinking into the distance as she told them to meet her back at the car by 10:30. And so he was dragged that night, up to game booths with cheap stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling (”You know we could buy these toys with pocket change at the dollar store, right?” “Winning them is the fun of it Damian, _god_ …stop being such a _killjoy_ ”), over to meet Jon’s friend Kathy to drink some unpasteurized milk (who, to Damian’s amusement, was quite taken with the fact that he was _thirteen_ …until Jon made a comment about Maya’s liking to _him_ in retaliation), and through a “scary” funhouse with twisting mazes and poor trying-too-hard actors in running makeup (both of them agreed, after the Joker, none of those clowns were the least bit intimidating).

It was fun. There, he said it. That unpasteurized milk was pretty tasty (whether it would make him sick was still under consideration). And maybe the toy Monk E Monster that he won at a ball-throwing booth (all too easy for someone of his skills) was kind of cool. Some of those mazes almost posed a _slight_ challenge. He enjoyed himself. He smiled fairly often that night.

Until they reached the looming ferris wheel, and his smile fell.

“I am not going on that.”

Jon handed him a stick perched with a monstrous, artificially pink ball of fleecy sugar–cotton candy.

“Come on!” the kid whined, threads of his own blue one sticking to the sides of his mouth. “It’s so cool! You can see the whole fairground up there!”

Damian squinted at the spinning contraption, studying its shoddy construction. “That thing is only being held together by luck. And I don’t believe in luck.”

“What…,” Jon’s voice fell to a whisper and he leaned in, “is  _Robin_ not brave enough to ride a mere ferris wheel?” For a moment, Damian was ready to march up to the damn thing and toss that stupid kid on it. But in another, he simply sighed and rolled his eyes.

“I can’t believe you tried that old trick on me.” He took an indignant bite out of his cotton candy (which tasted better than he cared to admit). “Not going to happen.”

He preferred to believe that his stomach lurched in response to the unpasteurized milk, not the way Jon’s face fell and his tiny voice sighed out “Ok, let’s go back to the car then.” But either way, he ended up paying that damn ticket price and leading the then-joyous boy onto the rickety platform, praying to whatever pantheon might be listening to let him survive this.

The wheel creaked and shook as it began to turn, and Damian knew this was a huge mistake.

But Jon was grabbing his shoulder and pointing out the shrinking people below, as well as all the places they had been that night. And yes, against the country sky, which glittered with far more stars than any city night, in the distance the flashing yellow and red lights of the carnival went from tacky to something kind of like beautiful. Just enough for him to forget his assured doom.

“See, I told you it was cool!” Jon said smugly, again showing an ability to read him that Damian knew now he did not like one bit. Damian smiled slightly in response. Only slightly.

“It’s alright. But you should see Gotham from up high, it’ll beat any carnival you’d attend for the rest of your life.”

“Sure! That would be awesome!”

Damian didn’t intend that as an invitation. But he supposed he could deal with it becoming one.

“Hey…Damian?” Jon said softer this time, both out of caution and seemingly to make sure no one else heard. “I know you thought it was kinda lame, but thanks for coming here.”

“…You’re welcome. Thank you for inviting me, I suppose.”

“Of course I did!” Jon said casually, “you’re my best friend.”

The wheel didn’t screech to a halt. But it might as well have.

“I’m–what?” Damian sputtered. Jon’s casual expression became timid, and Damian felt the hole get deeper. “I…I thought Kathy was your best friend.”

“I mean, she is…” Jon rubbed his arms and adjusted his glasses self-consciously. “But you’re different, ya know? She can’t be in with all the superhero stuff. You can be best friends with Superboy too. Like you can come to carnivals with me _and_ help me kick bad-guy butt!”

Damian blinked twice, for once unsure of what to say. He looked at Jon, then back at the fairgrounds, getting a little closer now that they were wheeling towards the ground. Then back at Jon.

Truly, what was the harm? 

“Ok.”

“Really?”

Damian shrugged. But he guessed that by now Jon could tell he didn’t feel that relaxed. “Yeah. We’re best friends.”   _Oh, wouldn’t Richard be_ so _proud,_ he thought sarcastically.

His newly christened best friend grinned wider than he had for the rest of the night, and Damian’s heart thudded a little in his chest. Must have been the milk again.

“For two supers, it’s just nice to get to be normal kids with each other.”

“I am not a–” Damian, much to his own surprise, stopped, sighed, at looked back across the carnival. “Yeah…yeah, it is.”

By the time they had gotten back to the car, they had pushed and shoved each other enough to get cotton candy in each other’s hair, stains on Damian’s shirt, and smears across Jon’s glasses. Ms. Lane sighed and sent them to wash in the bathroom before they went in the car.

Before long, they were laughingly making mud puddles of the dirt floor as they splashed each other from the sink. One thought, soft but warm, crept into Damian’s mind in the chaos. _Perhaps being a kid sometimes might not be so bad after all._

**Author's Note:**

> "Look at you kids, you know you’re the coolest  
> The world is yours and you can’t refuse it  
> Seen so much, you could get the blues, but  
> That don’t mean that you should abuse it"  
> -Lana Del Rey, Love


End file.
